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livSomeone on Twitter linked to this 2019 survey about what political opinions are regarded as "left" or "right" wing. The research is two years old and UK politics has basically imploded since then, but it seemed interesting. Particularly the fact that there is no opinion agreed by more than half of those surveyed to belong on one wing or the other. Pull-quote:
I'm most fascinated by the scatter plot of overlaps and divergences in opinions. At the time of the survey the key division in society wasn't left v right, it was Leave v Remain. I don't know that that would still hold true because the numbers of people of any political views at all who still think Brexit was a good idea are rapidly dwindling. But at the time, two thirds of people who identified as right-wing supported Brexit, whereas four fifths of people who identified as left-wing thought the UK should remain in the EU. Which makes the 2019 election even more incomprehensible; were Labour seriously hoping to pick up Leave votes from people whose political identity is right wingers?
I'm also slightly horrified by the top right of the plot. More than 4 out of 5 people, of any political views, think doctors should have the legal right to kill their patients. I am not going to turn this post into a rant about euthanasia, but that is really scary to me. It's bad enough going through life knowing that doctors are likely to refuse to treat me because I'm fat, mouthy, female but not hot or a mother of cute children, but the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens want doctors to be able to actively kill me? Let alone people who are even more despised by doctors than I am, such as racially minoritized people and people with intellectual disabilities. Likewise I'm really unhappy to see such a strong consensus for Malthusianism. To me there's no point "saving the environment" unless we can save the humans who live on the planet.
The whole point of the article is that we're looking at left v right rather than the two-dimensional system that includes the authoritarian-liberal axis. And I already knew that pretty much the entire electorate and all the parties are more authoritarian than I am. The so-called left in this country want stricter schools, more punishment for crimes (including even the damn death penalty *sigh*), just more "discipline" and "authority" in general, and the so-called right want these things even harder (though aren't prepared to fund the criminal justice or educational systems properly to achieve it, they just vaguely fantasize about bad people suffering). But I think there's another hidden axis here, which is how much you hate foreigners and minorities. Half of left-wing identifying people think we should restrict immigration, and a third think we should be politically incorrect (ie racist), and shouldn't have schemes to improve the life-chances of ethnic minorities. I'm guessing this may in fact be the tendency underlying the Brexit split.
The people in the survey consider "favour a powerful government over individual freedoms" to be a broadly right-wing view held by nearly half of left-wing people. To me "small government" is a pretty defining right-wing opinion. But like pretty much all the statements, we're as a population almost more split on the classification of opinions as right or left, than we are on the opinions themselves!
I think part of the problem is the tendency for some people to equate 'left' and 'right' with 'good' and 'bad' or perhaps 'nice' and 'selfish'. So people who basically want to make the world a better place consider themselves 'left-wing' but they hold some 'right-wing' views because most people have some element of selfishness / self-interest / cruelty in their politics. Support or opposition to nuclear weapons really doesn't feel like it can be classified on a left-right axis, but people in the survey who think of themselves as left-wing reckon that their support for nuclear weapons is a right-wing view. Right-wingers seem to think that both 'isolationist foreign policy' and 'financial aid for poorer nations' are left-wing views (which many of them agree with anyway).
Part of it is that people form an identity with one of the political wings, and then don't really consider whether any specific political view is actually consistent with that identity. Anyway, the somewhat dated survey is interesting; it sort of reinforces my view that I'm in a right-libertarian minority among a population that is almost entirely left-authoritarian, even though it isn't using the two-axis system. People vote for the party they think is most likely to give them a "strong" government, punish the bad people they don't like, and also provide a decent welfare system and public services. Since none of the existing political parties actually offer that as a platform, people end up voting on factors other than policies, or vote single-issue on non-partisan questions like Brexit (likewise Scottish independence, acceptance of trans people, whether we should have Covid mitigations, and a few other things like that).
I have no idea what this means for the current maelstrom in a shitbucket that calls itself a Conservative government. But anyway.
Even for the very most stereotypically left- and right-wing policies, half of the population do not identify them as such.So the obvious conclusion from this survey, as pointed out by the person on Twitter, is that "left" and "right" are meaningless labels because there is no sensible consensus about which policies are on which side! But I'm also interested in the detail of specific views.
I'm most fascinated by the scatter plot of overlaps and divergences in opinions. At the time of the survey the key division in society wasn't left v right, it was Leave v Remain. I don't know that that would still hold true because the numbers of people of any political views at all who still think Brexit was a good idea are rapidly dwindling. But at the time, two thirds of people who identified as right-wing supported Brexit, whereas four fifths of people who identified as left-wing thought the UK should remain in the EU. Which makes the 2019 election even more incomprehensible; were Labour seriously hoping to pick up Leave votes from people whose political identity is right wingers?
I'm also slightly horrified by the top right of the plot. More than 4 out of 5 people, of any political views, think doctors should have the legal right to kill their patients. I am not going to turn this post into a rant about euthanasia, but that is really scary to me. It's bad enough going through life knowing that doctors are likely to refuse to treat me because I'm fat, mouthy, female but not hot or a mother of cute children, but the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens want doctors to be able to actively kill me? Let alone people who are even more despised by doctors than I am, such as racially minoritized people and people with intellectual disabilities. Likewise I'm really unhappy to see such a strong consensus for Malthusianism. To me there's no point "saving the environment" unless we can save the humans who live on the planet.
The whole point of the article is that we're looking at left v right rather than the two-dimensional system that includes the authoritarian-liberal axis. And I already knew that pretty much the entire electorate and all the parties are more authoritarian than I am. The so-called left in this country want stricter schools, more punishment for crimes (including even the damn death penalty *sigh*), just more "discipline" and "authority" in general, and the so-called right want these things even harder (though aren't prepared to fund the criminal justice or educational systems properly to achieve it, they just vaguely fantasize about bad people suffering). But I think there's another hidden axis here, which is how much you hate foreigners and minorities. Half of left-wing identifying people think we should restrict immigration, and a third think we should be politically incorrect (ie racist), and shouldn't have schemes to improve the life-chances of ethnic minorities. I'm guessing this may in fact be the tendency underlying the Brexit split.
The people in the survey consider "favour a powerful government over individual freedoms" to be a broadly right-wing view held by nearly half of left-wing people. To me "small government" is a pretty defining right-wing opinion. But like pretty much all the statements, we're as a population almost more split on the classification of opinions as right or left, than we are on the opinions themselves!
I think part of the problem is the tendency for some people to equate 'left' and 'right' with 'good' and 'bad' or perhaps 'nice' and 'selfish'. So people who basically want to make the world a better place consider themselves 'left-wing' but they hold some 'right-wing' views because most people have some element of selfishness / self-interest / cruelty in their politics. Support or opposition to nuclear weapons really doesn't feel like it can be classified on a left-right axis, but people in the survey who think of themselves as left-wing reckon that their support for nuclear weapons is a right-wing view. Right-wingers seem to think that both 'isolationist foreign policy' and 'financial aid for poorer nations' are left-wing views (which many of them agree with anyway).
Part of it is that people form an identity with one of the political wings, and then don't really consider whether any specific political view is actually consistent with that identity. Anyway, the somewhat dated survey is interesting; it sort of reinforces my view that I'm in a right-libertarian minority among a population that is almost entirely left-authoritarian, even though it isn't using the two-axis system. People vote for the party they think is most likely to give them a "strong" government, punish the bad people they don't like, and also provide a decent welfare system and public services. Since none of the existing political parties actually offer that as a platform, people end up voting on factors other than policies, or vote single-issue on non-partisan questions like Brexit (likewise Scottish independence, acceptance of trans people, whether we should have Covid mitigations, and a few other things like that).
I have no idea what this means for the current maelstrom in a shitbucket that calls itself a Conservative government. But anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-25 06:58 pm (UTC)